Ep 053: The Importance of Financial Literacy with Jim Doyle

Ever wonder what success actually means?

How do you get it?

And how do you keep it?

We all want it yet sometimes it feels only some of us get to have it.

Can you put it in a box?

How can you get it? Can people take

it away? Or are you the one with the power?

Does it mean the same to all of us? Or are we the ones that create it?

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ready to give your business the momentum you desire. Head to Teresa Lambert coaching comm backslash momentum to secure your covenant spot. Welcome back, we got another episode of dissecting success here. And I am so excited for today's guest, we have the one and only Jim Doyle. He's a financial planner. He's been doing it for over 32 years, you can learn a lot more about him in the bio the show notes. But what I'm really excited about is that he has a TV show. He's been on the radio, he's seen a bit of him in the press, but he has this TV show and it's in the second season. And it's called Money matters with Jim Doyle right now you can catch it on Joy TV, and online. But I am so excited because how many people do you meet that build a career, like in finance or in any industry, and then they get to their own TV show? So Jim Doyle, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So let's get started with our favorite question. And I'm really excited to see what you have to say. What does success mean to you?

Well, it's probably not a money thing anymore. It's an opportunity to give back. Okay. That for me is where the passion kind of comes out.

So let's talk about giving back. Do you mean what financially with your time?

I think it's kind of, if you've got success in in any area, you have an opportunity to either mentor those that are coming up, or look at the root of what it is you're providing out there and say, How do I share that in a much broader sense. And for me, it's about enhancing financial literacy, and sharing it, it shouldn't be a secret.

I love that financial literacy shouldn't be a secret. That is very juicy. I'd love to dive into that more because I certainly have interesting conversations with some of my clients. And it's very interest like to me having a background in running a large business with a big team and and looking at financial statements and understanding them and learning to VT understand business finance, because obviously I had to, I mean, otherwise it's pretty hard to run a business. To me some of these financial literacies are like, it's just so natural. But what I'm realizing is that for a lot of people building their businesses, financial literacy is like it's kind of an afterthought. To talk about that a little bit more what that means to you.

Well, I think real success for me as an advisor comes down to when I can get people to be actually a bit intimate about their financials, knowledge about their fears about their their dreams, okay. When I talk to couples, and I say You know, it's way easier to talk about sex or religion or politics than it is to talk about money, and then go on, isn't it something that's shared? And people it isn't.

That's so funny. So people would rather talk about sex than money?

Absolutely, absolutely. Imagine sitting down with a couple and one person says you spend too much. And the other goes, of course, defensively, I spent just the right amount. Okay? And how do we get those people rowing in the same direction, we're able to develop something that helps them both achieve what's important long term.

So it's about getting people on the same page. I would love to know like for you to be doing this work now. And being very successful doing this work and helping people in relationships. I'm sure also single people really understand this financial literacy bringing people together. How did the passion to do this come about? Like, how did your personal story tie into this? Like, do you have an experience around your own finances that let you down to think, hey, this doesn't seem to be something that people talk about. So let's have a conversation.

Well, don't tell anybody this. But in my early college, college days, I probably had a few days where I didn't know where the next meal was coming from. And things like that, that kind of brand new event. So when I talk about financial security, I think it's something that a lot of people Harbor, but they're, they're embarrassed to kind of say, Hey, I'm not where I want to be, or I got a lot of wealth, but I really don't understand it. Okay. And I think the biggest challenge that I've seen in this industry is moving away from performance as being the primary concern, as opposed to what is your stuff designed to do for you? What type of lifestyle do you want it to give to you? How do you want to look after your family? You know, what really matters to you? At the end of the day, it isn't whether you made 6% or 16%, it's about can I do all the things that my money is supposed to do for me?

And what is your money supposed to do for you?

Well, it's an interesting discussion, because everybody's goals are very different. If I talk to somebody who's trying to build wealth, okay, at what point do you get satiated? Or is there a point? Okay? If I'm talking to a woman who's running a business, and I say, you know, what's your primary focus? And it might be about how does this enhance my family's situation, and their opportunities and their security? So it's about getting intimate with people that talk about these types of questions.

So this is really interesting. So can you just, like take us into your world for a moment? And just, like, explain, like, how do you see transformation happening with, you know, people, maybe even couples that are coming in and then not having these conversations? And so all of a sudden, they're building this financial literacy, they're getting clarity of what they want to do with their money, how they want to build their wealth, how they want to use it, like, what do you see happening? Like, what what transformations Do you see because it must be pretty big. I mean, I just assumed, but I would love to just hear more about that.

Well, let me share a story. I had a couple that I went to see a number of years ago, and sitting down with them. The husband says, you know, I'm going to continue to work another year, because I can get $65 more a month than my pension. And I tried to suggest to him, you know, are you missing anything if you retired today? No, no, Jim, you don't understand. I can get $65 more a month. I said, you're gonna work another whole year to get $65 more a month. Yep. Okay. So the wife sitting across the table, and this couple seems to talk at about 100 decibels all the time. And it's kind of a unique experience for me. So she says, Jim, she says, You know, when he retires, you told me he's not going to spend all this day on the computer. And I try that color variable lately. I really don't think that that's my role to do that. Okay. She goes, No, no, you tell them to listen. And that's what I found kind of interesting is the fact that folks are looking to me sometimes to help open these conversations, to define things a little bit better. And maybe there could be a bit of an arbitrator and the same time agitator to talk about what does it really look like if you don't mind me asking?

You know what I love about this story, it just took me back to when I was learning to ski so being from Winnipeg, peg, where the biggest hurdle we have is a bridge, I did not grow up skiing, and I married an ex pro skier who loves skiing. And so one of the advice, pieces of advice I got all along, while learning was don't learn from your husband. And it's interesting, because we'd go skiing, and you tell me what to do. And I sorta would do it, but I get frustrated with him, but then we'd go with friends who would tell me the exact same stuff, but I would, it was able to absorb it better. So the fact that, you know, I just translate that to the conversation about money having you be that mediator, mediator. So but we called it a mediator that may in between person, you know, sometimes I guess one person in that relationship has an understanding, and the other person just won't listen to it. So you need to be there to help translate and to help the couples get on the same page. And I think that's really interesting. And I'd love to switch gears a bit to entrepreneurs, because, you know, our listeners are entrepreneurs at all sorts of different levels. And I know, you know, we all have to start somewhere. But if we're just starting our business, like, what advice do you have for us so that we can build wealth?

I think one of the biggest challenges as I've started to adopt this more and more is I define business owners as firefighters, okay, you're constantly putting out one fire after another. Okay, so now it's a question of which fire is the biggest that gets the most attention. And from time to time, that little fire that's burned away over in the corner, may become a three stage fire. And that's the challenge is being able to step back and look at the priorities, but keep the focus, okay? Most business owners that I talked to, they're there, they love their business, they're intimate with their business, okay. And they want to do wonderful things with it. But I think occasionally, they lose focus on why they're in business, what their business is designed to do for them. And ultimately, you know, where they can get help from other people that take their business to other levels.

So how do you help them then? Right, like, like, because I like this idea of like, especially around the beginning, right. And, and I can see, especially at the beginning, when it comes to finances, you're, you know, comparison around firefighting. Financially, I could see being a really big one, because most business owners are starting up, like, and there's this big movement of solopreneurs, right? So people that are in business for themselves that don't have any teams that are literally wearing all these different heads, they might have an accountant or somebody helping them along. But there is this fluctuation in, you know, sales, there's fluctuations and money going in and coming out and plan, I actually spoke about this on one of our previous podcast episodes, to normalize the fluctuation and to also prepare for fluctuation. Because so many people think, you know, you're always going to make the same every single month and, and if you have business or yourself, it just looks a lot different, especially in that startup phase, where you're not yet established. So what are some of the things that you suggest somebody could do that is starting out to help them manage those times more, so that they're not ending up? You know, maybe figuring out where the next meal comes from?

Well, this one bothers business owners a fair bit, but I'm going to say, write a business plan. Okay? Put the time and the passion into a business plan before you spend your money. Okay? It's the process of investigating the options of the concerns and the outcomes. That's the real value. It's not producing a document in your hand that you can go, I've got a business plan I can take to my bank and borrow money with although that does help, okay? The second has to be with surround yourself with great people, okay? You don't know what you don't know if I can respectfully say that. And the whole idea here is that you didn't know everything overnight or the next day. It's it's a process of saying, How can you as a professional advisor in the lane that you're in, helped me do better? What should I look at? What should I learn? Who else should they be bringing into this process? And understand that what you know and understand today probably isn't gonna be the same as six months or a year as your business continues to grow and evolve.

I love that and so I want to just talk about the you know, surrounding yourself with the right people because I think it's, it's a good transition is talking about money matters with Jim Doyle with you. Do you call it money matters with Jim Doyle when you're talking about it? Does it feel weird to call it something that's you

know, I'm, I'm perfectly okay.

This is dissecting success with black Apple Inventables I love it. But you have a TV show. So first of all, congratulations, because that's a huge accomplishment, especially because you're in season two, which means you did something right. In season one. And, you know, having a TV show talking about something you're very passionate about is, is a lot of entrepreneurs goals, I think. I mean, I'm an extroverted extrovert, I guess or maybe an introverted extrovert, I don't know. But I know that if someone, if I had the opportunity to have a TV show to share my knowledge and wisdom, that would be something that I would definitely entertain, how did you end up getting a TV show?

Oh, it probably started about five years ago, when I met Carmen, Luisa Eliza from joy TV. And we started talking about a PSA in an effort to enhance financial literacy. So a series of walking talks, where we're saying, you know, here's something that people kind of sweep under the carpet, but maybe it'll allow us to shine a light on it for just a moment or two. And that kind of evolved to the point where they offered a show. And I said, that sounds like a wonderful idea. So that's where we are today. You know, as a graduate of UBC Sauder, School of Business, a family enterprise advisor program, you know, you get to see a lot of other professional perspectives. And if you get business owners to kind of open up a little bit, you can see where they're maybe not achieving success in every corner of their business life and their financial life. So that's the evolution of the show came about.

Tell me more about this show. Jim, like, what are some of the juiciest conversations? Do you have CEOs things that have come up from your experience so far, sharing stories around money, that matter?

Oh, last night, you show us an example, talking about preparing the kids to take over. And a lot of the business owners that I that I work with, okay, this is a wonderful concept. But there's none of that magical time where the implementation can actually get put in place. It's a gargantuan task for a lot of business owners. So again, they tend to put it off because most business owners they work with their time starved. Okay, they don't know where to start, they don't know who are involved. So it's that fire thing again, you know, what's the biggest one, I don't have to deal with this. Now, I'll come back to it. And that time never really happens, because they never gave it the time or attention.

Is money like when it comes to? Well, that's interesting. So this episode was about preparing your kids to take over the family business, or preparing the family. And I think that's actually a really interesting conversation. Because, you know, just listening to you say that, I think about some of the other episodes, you've, you know, had, but also in real life examples, like in Winnipeg, where I grew up, I remember this restaurant on Main Street, and it was a family restaurant. And when it came time for the kids to take over, the kids didn't want to and it closed. And, you know, I think another thing besides preparing the family to take over is, I know one of the episodes, I think your first episode of season two was inheriting a family business.

Yes. We had Chris mills of the mills, paint family, sharing, you know, the things that they went through and the tribulations and where they are today. And it's a gorgeous story. Because there's so much business legacy that goes there, you just can't help gotta be drawn into it.

Ooh, business legacy. I want to talk about that, because I just got really excited. I am always working on my legacy. If something were to happen to me tomorrow, what is the legacy I'm leaving behind? What is business legacy? Let's dive into that. That's an interesting concept.

In that show that you just mentioned, Chris was talking about how his dad, you know, tried to protect the people involved in the business. And he made a lot of the decisions so that the kids could be focusing on other areas of the business. Okay, that's great. But then, unfortunately, they lost dad, and all of that business acumen that was tied up in dad's mind was not available. And you know, when things are running smoothly, they run smoothly, and when circumstances change, the question is, how prepared are you? And in this situation, there were some abrupt shocks that came above and they go, you know, this was never anticipated.

It's so interesting to him and I'm just like, I'm thinking about you know, your analogy around like the firefighting and now we'll talk about about you know, like, like handing over this business legacy, right, like bringing your kids and in this scenario taking over without the preparedness, and it doesn't prepare us for it. But one thing that I find really interesting about that is, and I'm a big creative problem solver. So I look at, you know, running business, and every challenge that comes up as an opportunity to figure out a way to create a stronger foundation so that ultimately, you don't be have to be firefighting, because the firefighting to me is that struggle. And I've seen that, and I live that in business. And so for me, it's all about how can we create that so that that struggle isn't there. And what I have found is that, because at times, I didn't have that, you know, I didn't have anybody handing, you know, me, obviously, my own business, I'm starting it from scratch. And when I took over, you know, in the hotel business, I often didn't have the access to, to the mentorship, specifically around the hotel business, and I didn't have a lot of my own experience to draw from. But what happened was that it, it forced me to think VD creatively about different solutions, because I didn't, you know, it was almost like, because I didn't have pre existing knowledge, how to navigate something, I was able to think about it in a very different way, and coming up with creative solutions. So I would, you know, love to sort of, you know, tie this back in to, you know, what you were saying, with the son taking over? Right? And how, and he obviously created a successful business now, I would think he was on your show. I haven't seen it. So tell me how he maybe was able to figure some of those things out? And how has that impacted how he runs his business and his financial literacy?

Well, I think the the primary thing is that I hear this over and over and over from business owners is just their general lack of accounting, how the financial side of the picture is something that is almost a little bit of an afterthought, because they're so enamored with their product, or they're so enamored with retail, okay, that they may not be looking at the actual business side of things. And you know, you can run yourself into the ground, selling 10 times as many widgets as you were selling. But if you're not making any profit or not making any revenue, you've got a challenge.

Totally. So was he able to do that, like, when you were sort of seeing you work with his? Did you work with his father as a? Or did you just meet him on a show? I'm just so curious how that came about, like, were you able to see both sides, because that is so cool.

I never had a chance to meet that. So we're talking about the Mills family, we're talking about the brothers and the sisters, and the relationships that were there before, and how they've evolved and morphed over the years in terms of the roles that they took on in the company, or did not take in the company, because that's equally important, as well, as we talk about the passion and how they drive things going forward. To many business owners, you know, when you're the founder of the business, okay? You take risks in a way that makes sense to you, okay. But when you've got kids that tape over, it's not always the same flavor, because they feel they have responsibilities, or they might be custodians of a business, okay, or protectors of family legacy, and they might approach business with an entirely different mindset. So I think that has to be stirred up just a little bit to say, share with me, you know, what drives you? What does it look like? What are you concerned about the most?

And, you know, that's brilliant. And I think what I'm understanding is that everything comes down to financial literacy. And everything else can be creative and done, you know, done in certain ways, but you have to have that basic financial literacy in order to build wealth in order to build that legacy.

I think for a lot of folks, long term thinking is next week. I want to encourage a bit more perspective that goes beyond next week, next month, next year. And so, you know, What's my goal? Okay. And then what's my super big goal? Okay, and and what could I possibly do to make that happen? And once I've had, it's happened, am I going to be happy with that? Or am I going to continue to evolve and growth? And I think that's the ultimate challenge. When we looked at the professional advisors that a lot of people to work with, okay, there is an expectation that the accountant is going to give you everything in the universe in terms of knowledge. But it's quite often not the case, you have to ask these sorts. How can you help me? What don't I know, that I should be focusing on going forward. And I think every once in a while is a business owner, there's no accountability to anybody. So someone has to kind of come in there and step on the toes just a little bit, that the challenge the perspective and help them reconsider, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? What could they do differently to achieve more?

I love that. And that long term focus, I think is so so critical, right? Like, we can't just look at what's in front of us. Because if you do that, you never know what's coming your way, right? You don't even really know where you're heading. So I love that. So Jim, as we're wrapping up this episode of today, you've shared so many amazing, incredible things with us already. But I would love to know, what's one piece of advice that you would give someone on their path to financial success?

It's a great question. And because it's so different for everybody, there's no one answer that is going to be equal. If I want to build a business that survives me, that has legacy in the community, and so forth, that's going to be very different than if I'm a serial entrepreneur. And my objective is to start a business or build a business and when it achieve success, sell it and move on to the next task. Those are very different perspectives. But one theme is kind of important is say, What do I want to accomplish? What's important to me? What are the steps to get there? And instead of focusing in the business, every once in a while, it'll with some sort of regular basis, step back and focus more on why and how

so powerful. I love that. What do you want to accomplish? So this is such a powerful question to wrap up with today's episode. Ask yourself that if you're listening, ask yourself this question. What do you want to accomplish financially, in your business, with your legacy? Like, what is it get clear on that, and your why? And just see what happens. So Jim, thank you so much for being our guests. If people want to learn more from you, if they want to maybe tune into the show, how can they do that tell us how our listeners can find you

the landing page, so you can go to Jim doyle.ca, you can go to our website, Doyle and Associates, you can go to the joy TV website, and they've got a chronology of the shows that we've got there. And you know, some of them, I think, are kind of nice. So And lastly, you know, give us a call, send us an

email. I love that. I love that. And we'll make sure that we drop all the links to everything that you just mentioned in the show notes as well, so you can check that out. And with that being said, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of dissecting success. This is a wrap and peace out. That's a wrap for another episode of dissecting success. enjoyed this episode. Make sure to subscribe to black hair blonde Venables and Teresa Lambert's podcast dissecting success on the App Store.